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Frazer Irving on “Days Missing”

Launching from Archaia in August is “Days Missing,” a five-issue series conceived by Roddenberry Productions Executive Trevor Roth and featuring a different creative team each issue. The book focuses around a mysterious being called the Steward, who is able to remove full days from history in an effort to shape the course of human events. Issue #1 will be written by Phil Hester and illustrated by Frazer Irving, with covers by Dale Keown. Creative teams for future issues have not yet been announced. CBR News caught up with first issue artist Frazer Irving to discuss the series and his role in crafting the “Days Missing” universe.

“The main character is the Steward, a dude who has been around for a looooooong time and seems to be a bit of a nanny to the human race, or indeed even all life on earth,” Irving told CBR. “There’s a dinosaur, too, and ancient Babylonian Kings, all mixed in with doctors and ex-fighter pilots turned modern day kings.”

The Steward was designed by Dale Keown, but Irving indicated that other significant elements of “Days Missing” were all his. “I think that as each story peels back more about the Steward and his freaky secret crib, then other artists will get to expand upon what I’ve laid down so in the end we will have a world fleshed out by loads of us, all with nicely conflicting styles which I think will represent the nature of the Steward’s mind quite well,” the artist said.

Though he indicated it was too early to discuss another recently announced project, an arc on Grant Morrison’s “Batman and Robin,” Irving did say there is a different kind of pressure working on an established character as contrasted with an original property like “Days Missing.” “Drawing Batman will be a completely new challenge for me, because the pressure is on to apply a more distinct style to the illustration than a normal comic job. With a fresh character, the slate is clean and whatever I draw will be the first version of this character which will then set the bar for subsequent artists to match/modify. With Batman I’m up against 40 years of different interpretations, some lame some sublime, so I need to approach that very differently than a new gig like this.”

The first issue of “Days Missing,” written by Phil Hester, involves what Frazer Irving describes as “an outbreak of a deadly virus–somewhat creepily along the same lines as the current swine flu pandemic–and it introduces the Steward to us, setting up his situation so that the subsequent stories don’t need to explain everything each time, allowing the writers to explore varying aspects of situation.”

Irving has previously produced cover art for “The Darkness,” which Hester writes, and illustrated two interior pages from Hester’s layouts. The first issue of “Days Missing,” though, will be their first full-length collaboration. “I like the way Phil writes ‘cos he is succinct and to the point; no needless waffle or fancy descriptions, just concise stage directions and very effective dialogue,” Irving told CBR. “I’ve always said that the dialogue should be the guide for me to best tell the story, and Phil really has it nicely boiled down here.”